Tiona (a sequel to "Vaz") (28 page)

Wide eyed, Nolan glanced up through the top windows, “Could we go out to space right now?!”

Tiona laughed delightedly, “I don’t think we better. We went up past the 62 mile Kármán limit last night and some military guys have been sniffing around since then. My dad’s a little worried they might try to appropriate this technology and restrict it to military use.”

Nolan turned wide eyed to look back over his seat at Dr. Eisner, “Can they
do
that kind of thing?!”

Eisner shrugged uncomfortably. “
I
don’t know.”

Suddenly, the windows were flooded with brilliant light from several spotlights. Spotlights that were above them, so they had to be mounted on helicopters. The saucer’s AI spoke, “We are being contacted on multiple radio frequency bands with demands that we land the saucer.” Its typical calm AI tones belied the freight of its message.

Tiona glanced wide-eyed at her two passengers, then said, “AI, take us down to one inch off the ground here in the middle of the…” She paused. They had been moving backwards down a fairway toward the narrow isthmus in the trees around its tee box. “AI, go ahead and lower us to within an inch of the ground, but wait until we’re over the tee box there at the end of the fairway. Ask the people on the radio who they are and what they want?”

A few moments later the saucer had lowered itself to the point where Nolan felt like it was on the ground though he assumed that it was in fact still an inch above it. At Tiona’s command it turned to face down the fairway and they could see a helicopter lower itself to the ground just in front of the saucer. It kept its rotors turning hard so Nolan thought it would be able to launch itself back into the air on a moment’s notice. Through the upper windows they could see three more helicopters hovering above the trees behind and to either side of them.

The AI said, “I am putting the radio message on the speakers.”

There was a pop and a voice filled the cabin, “… is General Alonzo Harding. Ground your craft, open your doors, and prepare to be boarded. I repeat, this is General Alonzo…”

Tiona said, “AI, send this, ‘General Harding, what do you want?’” Then she turned to her passengers, “Do you guys want to get out while I’m talking to him? You know, in case he does something… crazy?”

They both stared at her for a moment, then Nolan said, “No! I’m staying with you.”

Eisner’s head swiveled around as he looked up and out at the helicopters. He appeared desperately uncertain.

Harding’s voice came back on, “We need to know who you are… And what kind of technology that is!”

Tiona said, “AI, send the following to General Harding. ‘General, we’re civilians and employees of the University of North Carolina. Dr. Robert Eisner, and grad students Nolan Marlowe and Tiona Gettnor. We are
not
terrorists. We do not represent a threat to the United States. We don’t believe that the military has authority over us. We will, if you wish, submit to civilian authorities… We aren’t aliens either if you’re worried about that. ’” She turned to her passengers and Nolan could see she was shaking with reaction. She said, “If they threaten us, I’m going to try to get to orbit. You guys might want to get out after all.”

A man had gotten out of the helicopter in front of them and was trotting towards them. Nolan said, “I’m staying with you.” Eisner had his hands on the buckle of his seat harness, but he didn’t disengage it. He didn’t say anything either.

Harding’s voice grated threateningly as he came back on, “Yeah, well, if you
do
prove to be just a professor and his grad students and your technology is deemed
not
to be a threat to the security of the United States,
then
we’ll turn you over to the civilian authorities. Meanwhile, open your door and let our man in. I’d hate to have to open fire…”

Tiona turned to her passengers. “If you’re getting out, you need to go now! If you’re staying, recline your seatbacks!” She matched the words with action, as her seat back started to lean back to horizontal. The leg rest started to lift her ankles. Nolan started to recline his seat and after a moment’s hesitation Eisner did as well.

The man who’d gotten out of the helicopter was circling the saucer, looking over and under the big disc in an apparent effort to find the door.

***

General Harding headed toward Riker as the NCO and his AI put up the track of the bogey. As expected, the track began following I-40 as soon as it left Umstead Park. The icon at the tip of the track left the freeway and was almost to Chapel Hill by the time the general stepped up behind them. “Major, what’ve you got?” the general growled.

“Sir,” he said pointing to the red icon and the track it trailed behind it. “This icon and its track represent an AWACs radar return, presumed to be airborne as you can see it crosses open ground rather than following a road at the beginning and the end. Also, though it’s low, radar confirms it is not on the ground. It appears to be approaching the town of Chapel Hill.”

The general turned and bellowed across the room, “Get those helos in the air! Target is just east of Chapel Hill at present. Call the Air Force; tell them to scramble the F-15s, going west. They’re to orbit the area of the bogey so keep them apprised of its location.”

There followed an uncomfortable wait as the helicopters spooled up and left the vicinity of Raleigh. Eventually movement of their green icons on the screen showed that they were headed west after the bogey. Riker wondered whether the helicopters could possibly catch something that had had enough power to launch itself into space the night before. At present, however, the bogey was moving slowly enough that the helicopters should be able to catch up to it without much trouble. Then the general noticed that one of the choppers hadn’t moved and started barking questions about it.

Riker had been listening to the general raise hell. The NCO managing the AWACS display nudged Riker’s knee, “Sir, the bogey’s stopped moving.”

Riker frowned at the display. The stationary bogey appeared to be a little bit southeast of the center of town. He leaned down, “What’s there?”

The sergeant mumbled a few commands to his AI and the map was replaced with a satellite image. “Looks like a soccer field.”

“What the hell?! A soccer field?!”

“Yes Sir, that’s what it says too.”

Riker stood back up, wondering what the hell a flying saucer would be doing at a soccer field. He turned to the general, “Excuse me Sir, the bogey’s become stationary at a soccer field just southeast of Chapel Hill’s downtown.”

The general’s harangue about the helicopter—which apparently had a pilot out taking a leak—stopped immediately as his eyes snapped down to the display. He echoed Riker’s thoughts, “A soccer field?!”

“Yes Sir, that’s what the maps say.”

The general looked up and addressed the entire room, “Do we have any assets that can give us images? Does that AWACS have infrared or anything?”

“No Sir, not this one. We won’t have imaging until the helicopters arrive.”

The group watched tautly, wondering whether the bogey would move again before the helicopters could get there. After a few minutes it did start moving and Riker felt the tension ratchet up. However, it moved slowly and seemed to be meandering aimlessly!

Harding barked the question on Riker’s mind, “Where the
hell
is it going?!”

The NCO said something and the screen snapped back to the satellite image. “Sir,” the sergeant said, “it seems to be following the fairways of this golf course.”

A stunned silence followed this revelation. Riker thought to himself,
the little green men came all the way here in their flying saucer to play golf at night?!

The helicopters were approaching the location of the saucer and General Harding began issuing commands, directing the helicopters so that they would encircle it. He had them stay out of sight, then had one turn off all its running lights and lift up high enough to put eyeballs on the UFO.

Moments later they were all looking at an infrared image from the helicopter’s targeting system. The helicopter pilot reported that he could see very little in the dim lighting. On the IR image they saw what indeed appeared to be a flying saucer slowly meandering down a fairway from the green toward the tee box! It showed up on IR as warm, though not nearly as hot as the other helicopters in the field of view. If it was supported by a rotor, the rotor was surprisingly cool as it didn’t show up on IR. No exhaust plume like a turbojet engine either.

Harding said, “What’s holding it up?! No rotors, moving too slow to act as an airfoil, is it lighter than air? Ducted fans?”

Not wanting to say, “I don’t know,” Riker said nothing. No one else volunteered an opinion either.

“Okay, here we go,” Riker muttered to himself. He began issuing orders for the helicopters to close in, rise up, and put their spotlights on the saucer. Then he stepped over to the comms sergeant and had him start sending radio communications.

The big screen at the front of the room flickered and began displaying ordinary light images of the saucer, lit by the spotlights. The screens showed it from the viewpoints of several different helicopters. Riker’s eyes widened in surprise. He’d been expecting some kind of exotic alien construction. Instead, he found himself looking at something that just struck him as… man-made. It certainly appeared to be built out of ordinary metal, he thought aluminum. There was a big disc in the middle. Underneath the big disc was a featureless and rounded segment. Mounted on top of it was a slope sided section with what appeared to be glass windows around the top half of that section. The very top looked like it was covered with glass as well.

Looking down through the glass windows into the cockpit, or whatever you would call the area, Riker could see five seats like you might expect humans to sit in. And, in fact, three humans appeared to be sitting in those seats. Ordinary humans. A young man and woman appearing to be in their twenties and an older man who looked to be in his fifties!

No aliens!

Harding was talking, first by the sound of it, to an AI, then to the young woman. He demanded that they ground the saucer and open their doors for boarding. Riker felt like the general’s words were very aggressive, as if they had caught some criminals or terrorists or something. He wondered whether such a threatening attitude could be legally justified.

Then he remembered that presumably these people had carried out an illegal rocket launch into outer space. The government’s office of commercial space transportation was supposed to license rockets that were beyond the “amateur” class and any rocket that could get above the Kármán line into outer space was certainly above the amateur class.

Then Riker realized it wasn’t a rocket…

Harding told the weapons officer to get out of one of the helicopters and go board the saucer. Riker realized then that it would’ve been better to have a mix of helicopters rather than just the attack helicopters they had sent. Attack choppers only had two personnel in each one and they would have been much better off with some Marines for a boarding operation. The screens showed the weapons officer climbing out of the chopper and crouching under its blades as he ran toward the saucer. He started going around the saucer, evidently looking for a door or other entrance.

Riker looked back at the image that was zoomed in on the top of the saucer. The people in it seemed to be reclining their seats and he wondered why. Surely they weren’t planning to take a nap?

“Open your damned door or we’re going to open fire!” Harding shouted.

To Riker, at first, it seemed like the saucer had just vanished. Playing it back in his mind a second later he realized he’d seen an upward blurring.
That’s why the seats were reclining! Acceleration couches for vertical takeoff!

Several voices shouted, “Where’d it go?!” or other versions of the same question.

Riker yelled, “It went straight up! Roll your cameras up! AWACS, do you still have it?!” He looked to the screens, trying to figure out where the F-15s were while wondering if there was any chance they might have the ability to track the saucer. The view from one of the helicopter cameras rolled upwards, but by the time it reached the vertical, there was nothing to be seen. Just about the time Riker thought he must’ve been mistaken about where the saucer went, the NCO at the desk said, “AWACS tracking with radar. Altitude 6,000 feet, velocity almost Mach 1. Vertical acceleration was four G’s.”

Riker later went back over the record of the engagement. It only took nine seconds for the saucer to get to 6,000 feet at just less than Mach 1. From there it stopped accelerating, but, going up at 1,100 feet per second, by the time General Harding reached the F-15s twenty seconds later, the saucer had almost reached their altitude of 28,000 feet. The F-15s which had been scrambled were armed with older AIM-9 Sidewinder air to air missiles, which are relatively short range and use infrared guidance.

It was thirty-eight seconds after Harding reached them that the F-15s finished bringing their targeting radar online and, guided by the AWACS, pitched up to acquire the saucer. By then the saucer was at nearly 70,000 feet!

Twenty-nine seconds after that, Harding’s order to fire air to air missiles was acted on. It had been delayed by some difficulty getting the infrared seeker heads to lock onto the saucer since it didn’t have hot exhaust. The saucer was warm, but not that much warmer than the background. By that time the saucer had reached 100,000 feet. Sidewinders can reach Mach 2.5 in level flight, but flying straight up they only gained 1,000 feet per second on the saucer. Even at the start of their flight they had 70,000 feet to go to reach the saucer, but by the time their engines burned out fifty seconds later they had only gained 50,000 feet on it. They had reached 130,000 feet, but the saucer was at 155,000 feet by then.

“Son of a
bitch
!” General Harding screamed as the missiles burned out, pounding his fist on a desktop.

Riker stared at him, wondering at the possible repercussions of firing military weaponry at a civilian aircraft. A civilian aircraft that did not appear to be a threat to anyone, even if it wasn’t in compliance with the law.
Should I have objected to that on the basis of the order being illegal?

Riker wasn’t sure, but he had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

***

Nolan had had his eyes on Tiona while she stared out the windows over their heads. He’d glanced up at the hovering helicopters. One was circling over them, but as Nolan watched, it had arced into the part of its circle that wasn’t directly overhead. Tiona gave a command to her AI and suddenly Nolan’s body slammed down into the acceleration couch, weighing 900 instead of 180 pounds as the saucer’s four Gs of acceleration added itself to the Earth’s one G of attraction. It felt like the force he’d experienced at the bottom of the plunge on a big roller coaster, but that had only lasted for a second or two. This weight felt like it was steadily crushing him for a full nine seconds before it suddenly eased off.

Nolan had felt a little dizzy under the heavy acceleration but it cleared quickly. He looked at Tiona to see how she was, but she appeared alert. She had her head lifted up to study the screens in front of her and her seat was lifting itself out of the reclined position. As he started to lift his own seatback, he turned to look at Dr. Eisner.

Eisner’s head was flopped lifelessly over to the side! Nolan popped his buckle and started to roll out of his chair to go to Eisner’s aid. Tiona said, “Stay buckled in! We aren’t safe yet!”

“But Dr. Eisner…!” Nolan said turning to look at their professor again.

Tiona quickly glanced at Eisner herself. “He’s just unconscious, I hope. Five G’s of acceleration causes dizziness and fainting in a lot of people.”